PROJECT
OVERKILL

Ladies
and gentlemen, I do believe that we have ourselves a winner for the bloodiest
Playstation game of 1996! Yep, Project Overkill is bloody, and damn bloody good
to boot. You objective...kill everything in sight!! The game does actually
have a plot...you play as any one of four hired agents sent down to a planet to
stop Project Overkill and erradicate basically everything in site. Each of your
four characters has his or her own specialty, and can complete certain missions
better than the others. It's your call which one to use for each mission, but
be forewarned, once you kill off a character, you lose that character for the
entire game. Lose all four and you must start over, from the beginning. Nobody
said killing was an easy business...

The
game is presented in a top-down isometric view similar to the one use in Loaded.
Only in this game everything is crisp and bright. The character detail, while
a bit on the small side, is very good and well animated. The backgrounds are
well done too. Computers have little lights blinking on and off, as does wall
panels and other objects. Every object (with the exception of walls) can be
blown up and destroyed.

When I first started playing this game, I
found myself wasting ammo, just to watch the equipment blow up (it also makes
good target practice)! Now for the good stuff...there is blood and death
everywhere to be found here and it is all presented in a wonderful, gruesome
way. When you shoot an enemy, the blood spirts from their bodies and splatters
on the floor and walls...and the bodies stay where you shoot them. In a major
battle, you could have bodies littering the floor!

Which brings me to
my favorite part...when you walk over a corpse, you leave bloody footprints in
your wake. The Playstations transparency power is put to good use in this game
too. As you walk towards walls that are blocked from your view, they turn
translucent so you can see what goodies are there (extra health, ammo, etc).
There is however some slowdown when you enter a room with a lot of creatures in
it. Oh well, nothings perfect and this only happens rarely. Overall, very nice
graphics.

The
sound effects are good. Everything that's should be there...is. Nice weapon
sounds, death screams, explosions, etc. No problems. The music is, for lack of
a better word, dramatic! The tunes are haunting, moody and fully orchestrated.
A perfect soundtrack for this type of game.

There
are a lot of levels in this game (the book claims over 40), with multiple paths
to each location. I would venture to guess the replay value to be relatively
high. The control is really weird at first to get used to though. Just walking
and aiming at your target at first play is a chore but with a little persistance
you will soon be strafing with the best of them.

The character
animations are many. You can shoot off heads, body parts, etc. It usually
takes two or three direct hits to drop an opponent. A nice touch is when you
hit your target and it drops to it's kness...if you are close and quick enough,
you can switch to hand to hand mode and bash the characters head in with the
butt of your weapon! There must be dozens of death scenes, because each game I
notice two or new ones that I haven't seen yet. One thing is for sure, it keeps
you coming back for more.

This
game is everything Loaded should have been and much, much more. It is a true
2nd generation title that is intended for a more mature audience that enjoys
gratuitous violence. It's not for everyone! The missions are quite long and
get harder and more complex are you get further into the game. The intense
orchestration and theme of this game make for a BLOODY good time!!